


only human, though super at times

by APgeeksout



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Background Becky Lynch/Seth Rollins, Established Bayley/Finn, F/M, Multi, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:46:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25663075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: “Tonight’s the night?” Becky asked. “Pittsburgh gets the Demon?”Set in an AU in which NXT is a record label instead of a wrestling promotion.
Relationships: Bayley/Elias Samson, Bayley/Finn Balor/Elias Samson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: Extreme Deadline Exchange '20





	only human, though super at times

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThatBohoFemme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatBohoFemme/gifts).



“Tonight’s the night?” Becky asked. “Pittsburgh gets the Demon?”

“Uh, let me think. We’ve been on the road a minute. Made a left at Akron...” Bayley trailed off, pretending to have lost the thread of their travels and grinned into the facetime call. In reality, she’d driven the last leg of the trip here, with Finn in shotgun, occasionally navigating for her but mostly building a Lego Super Mario kit out of the open glove compartment, and Corey and Elias sharing the bench seat behind them and taking a rare break from insulting each other to instead relish bagging on the Pirates’ team owner with someone else who shared their pain.

She was touched and not even a little bit surprised that Becky’d kept close track of the tour, even though she wasn’t with them. Maybe she’d been especially paying attention _because_ she couldn’t be out with them.

“True enough, I do not miss that part of being on the road.” Becky sighed and readjusted herself on what looked like the comfy couch in Seth’s game room. The camera dipped so that the huge swell of her belly peeked into the bottom of the frame. “Miss everything else, though. Miss you guys something fierce.”

Bayley sat down on the edge of the stage, close enough to be found if she were needed, but out of the way of where Corey and the venue crew were taping down loose lengths of slack cable, and let her feet swing into the space she hoped would be packed with happy fans in a few hours.

“We miss you, too, Bex! Everyone does, but me especially.” She made a Mr. Yuck face. “Dude, I’m _so_ tired of only hanging out with boys.”

Becky laughed. “You love ‘em.” She paused, significantly, and arched an eyebrow at her. “All of ‘em.”

She didn’t argue, because Becky wasn’t wrong. She did love them: Finn, filling their apartment with love and little pieces of wonder and being her home on the road; Corey, his singing days done too soon, flogging his too-cool-for-these-nerds persona at the same time as he worked tirelessly to book them gigs and get them press; Elias, who’d agreed to sit in with them for a single show to repay a favor owed to a friend-of-a-friend of Corey’s and somehow never quite managed to drift away from them afterward.

“Don’t think I don’t see you lot on insta, getting cozy with my replacement,” Becky said, her accent going a little thicker under all the sarcasm she’d piled onto the words. “You with the guitar lessons, and Finn’s little singalongs. Even Corey’s being meaner to him than he ever was to me.”

Bayley laughed with her and waved at Finn where he was making his way down the center aisle between the rows of faded velvet seats. "He's not far," she offered. "I'm sure I could get him over here to call you a poser for old times' sake."

Becky was still making it extremely clear how she felt about that particular term of endearment when Finn came within reach.

“You trying to earn us an explicit content warning?” Finn scolded playfully, stepping into the space between Bayley's knees and insinuating himself under her arm to squeeze into the frame of the call with her. She molded herself against him and soaked up the warmth of his voice talking to Becky and the heat of his body pressed close to her own. He always ran a little hotter on days the Demon was set to take centerstage.

They stayed on the line for a while, talking about home and the road and designs for both new merch and appropriately rock-and-roll nursery decorations, until after Seth had joined Becky on her end of the call and it was time for Finn to slip off and start his longer-than-normal pre-show routine. Bayley let the phone drop into her lap, call forgotten for a moment while she pulled Finn into a sweet, lingering kiss.

“You make it hard to leave,” he said, one hand squeezing her thigh, hot even though her jeans.

“That’s the idea.” She grinned and ignored the teasing and terrible puns coming from the phone speaker.

* * *

“So, he comes out all painted up, and everybody just loses their minds? Is that how this works?”

Bayley met Elias’s eyes in the vanity mirror, where she’d just finished touching up her makeup, and sprinkled another dash of glitter across her neck and shoulders, where it would catch the stage lights even from her station behind her drum kit, even after she'd started to sweat it off partway through the show. He was ready for showtime, hair loose from its messy everyday bun in a cloud of curls, a trio of skinny, sparkly, not-quite-matching scarves draping over his shoulders and down his broad chest, the fringed ends of the longest one ending just above the ripped-out places in the thighs of his jeans.

“Kinda.” It wasn’t _not_ true, even if it maybe also wasn’t the whole story. “Jealous?” She grinned and turned herself around on the stool to face him without any glass between.

She let him scoff and pull on his perfect misanthropic scowl - they were still on rehearsal time, after all - before she plucked a pencil out of her kit and moved toward him. “I don’t think we can - or really want to - do anything about the crowd losing it for Balor,” she said, and held up the pencil, “but we can always paint you up a little, too.”

If she was being honest, it was a little bit of a test. He hadn’t blinked in any of the last twelve cities. Would he tonight, before things got real?

He let her square up to him and take his jaw in her hand, stroking over his beard and turning his face to the best light. She pressed her thumb to his cheek, gently pulling delicate skin taut and carefully outlining the lids of each hazel eye in turn. He stayed still and quiet while she worked, and even after, when she framed his jaw again and tilted his head to examine her handiwork. 

“Hometown show,” she said, a little wistfully - they’d done a small loop of shows in Ireland last summer, but hadn’t managed to set up any Bay-area bookings yet. She dropped her hands to his shoulders, fingertips grazing over tickly scruff and smooth skin and gauzy cotton and slippery silk along the way. “You nervous?” 

He scrunched his face in a theatrical way that said _Never! As if!_ without any words and without being especially plausible. “Not that I’m saying I’m jealous, exactly, either,” he said, letting his hands settle solidly at her hips, “but Finn has some enviable things going for him.”

* * *

Bayley did send Becky all the best pictures from the show: Corey, hair shellacked into submission, completely at home on-stage as he introduced them alongside his high school best friend turned local radio DJ; the crowd, in fact, losing their collective mind when the stage lights went up Demonic-red as Elias strummed out the first notes of Finn’s entrance; Bayley whaling on the drums, the fresh, sharp edge of her bob obscuring her face except for a sliver of her bright smile; Balor slinking out to the lip of the stage, apparently singing to one faceless crowd member whose hand splayed out against the tendrils of darkness that traced down his forearm; Balor crowded into Elias’s personal space, both fingering their guitars, neither giving an inch; all three of them sweaty and bright-eyed, signing autographs after the encore, Corey visible in the background over Bayley’s shoulder, beaming proudly at them; Elias tying his damp hair back while also gesturing animatedly at someone (Bayley) just out of frame; Finn, on hands and knees backstage, hair wild and Balor’s mask falling away from his face in thick flakes.

She kept to herself the one snapped on her own phone from after the aftershow: Elias’s hair frizzy across the pillow, her cheek tucked into his neck, both of them hazy-eyed and streaked here and there with smears of red and black.


End file.
